These
guidelines are designed to give you a framework from which you can develop a
weather briefing. When giving your briefing it is very important to use
established terminology for the situation or phenomenon you are describing,
please ask for help. A briefing starts with study and preparation. You can't
give a good weather briefing if you don't understand the weather situation, and
you can't understand the weather situation without thorough analysis and study. It is quite common to talk about less than 1/4 of
what you study and prepare for in your briefing. All items below should be
looked at before you prepare your briefing. Items where it says "optional"
represent the minimum material to be presented. Other items where it says
"examine" should be presented if they are pertinent, add quality and breadth to
the briefing, AND you have something relevant to say about them. When referring
to or pointing to places on the map, use the correct geographic references, see
map1 and
map2

(Note: you should always
have read at least the local Forecast Discussion, and maybe the surrounding ones
as well)

(Note: if this is the first day of a city, then show climo numbers and topography map)

A.
Big picture: (2 minutes)

1) Discuss large scale (hemispheric) analyses and
locate major troughs, ridges, jet streams, and short waves.